“You mean you think Millie killed him?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I know now that she didn’t. Only one person could have killed Pete Garraty, and that was Pete Garraty himself.”
His words fell among them like a dropping bomb. Everyone started talking at once, and he had to raise a hand to quiet them. “It was the cigar box, of course, that told me. I was convinced that Millie made the bomb in Pete’s basement workshop, and then spilled her drink on those gifts so she’d have an excuse to unwrap one. I imagined her emptying out the cigars and planting her bomb in that box. But the idea is just as impossible as the outsider theory, for two reasons. First, Fletcher didn’t find the discarded cigars anywhere in the house. And second, how would Millie have known in advance that the right type of box would present itself? The bomb was too large for a tie box, too heavy for a shirt box. It wouldn’t have fit with a bottle of Scotch. No, it had to be prepared for a cigar box, and therefore the bomber had to know there’d be a cigar box present.”
“You mean the bomber had a confederate?” Steve Garraty asked.
“It would be farfetched to imagine one person bringing a gift-wrapped — and empty — cigar box so Millie could place a bomb in it, when the bomb could have been placed in such a box earlier. No, only one person made the bomb and placed it in that box, and wrapped the box like a birthday gift. Since we’ve found evidence the bomb was made in the basement workshop, and since only Pete and Millie had access to it, one of them must have done it. I’ve already shown that Millie could not have acted on the spur of the moment, hoping for the right-shaped box — so that leaves Pete.”
“But why would he want to kill himself?” Fletcher asked.
“Simple — he didn’t. His death was accidental. George Gonzo told me Pete wanted to run for the state senate. What better way to grab the voters’ attention before the primaries than with a bomb in a cigar box, disguised as a birthday gift? Of course a man who’d do such a thing must be a little nuts. But he figured Gonzo’s people would be blamed, and he’d bolster his image as the crime-fighting assistant D.A. the underworld feared. Political careers have been built on far less. Pete knew about the party. He made his pipe bomb, assembled it in the cigar box with battery and detonator, and took it with him when he pretended to go to the store. He’d have known Millie would put the gifts on the bed, so he sneaked around the rear of the house, slit the screen, and reached in with the bomb.”
“But he certainly didn’t plan for it to go off,” Connie said.
“Of course not. But what happened? Millie spilled a drink on it, and rewrapped it with different paper. Pete didn’t realize what he was opening until it was too late. Instead of pretending suspicion about the cigar box, he went ahead and opened it — and blew himself up.” Leopold glanced now at Millie. “He wasn’t worth protecting with a confession, Millie. He just wasn’t worth it.”
“I...” she began, and then fell silent.
“What will you tell the papers?” Steve Garraty asked.
“In England they’d call it death by misadventure, I suppose. We’ll have to tell the full story and hope the public understands. And pities him just a little.”
After they’d gone, when he was alone with Connie Trent, Leopold sat for a long time staring at the charred cigar box in its plastic evidence bag. It might have been a crystal ball holding untold secrets.
“It’s late,” Connie said. “I guess I’ll be getting along home too.”
“Havana Supremes,” Leopold said.
“What?”
“The brand of cigars. You can’t get Cuban cigars in America, you know. There’s an embargo.”
She’d picked up her purse and was starting for the door. “So? Does it make any difference what brand was on the box?”
“A big difference,” Leopold said sadly.
Something in his voice stopped her. “What is it?”
“This damned case! I’ve never had one like it!”
“What do you mean?”
“When Pete Garraty unwrapped the paper and saw this box, he’d have known it was his bomb. The paper might have been different, but still he’d have known. No one else would have been giving him a box of Havana Supremes.” He looked up at her. “He wouldn’t have opened the box, Connie.”
“But he did open it! We all saw him!”
“And we saw the terrified look on his face. But he would have opened that box, knowing what was in it, only if he knew it wouldn’t explode. If he’d made the bomb with loving care, placed it in the box, and failed to hook up one of the battery wires. The publicity would be just as effective that way, and there’d be no danger to himself or to any of the guests. An underworld bomb, meant to kill him, but it didn’t go off! That’s the way he would have planned it, Connie. And he would have told Millie about his scheme, because they never had secrets.”
“But it did go off! It did kill him!”
“Because somebody opened that cigar box later and connected the wire.”
Connie put a hand to her mouth. “Not Millie!”
“Who else? She spilled the drink, she rewrapped the gift. Hell, she confessed to it!”
They sat in silence for a long time, and finally Connie asked, “What are you going to do now?”
“Go home to bed,” he said with a sigh. “There’s probably not a prosecutor in town who could get a conviction in this case. She confessed once, and perhaps she will again. Otherwise, well, she has to live with what she did.”
He locked away the cigar box and turned out the lights as he left.
Enter the Stranger
by Donald Olson
There are times, when one escapes into fantasy, that a misty mirage seems to portend a strange destiny.
When the young man with the dream-scarred eyes finally found his way to Windfall, De Vore Goring’s secluded estate, he stood trembling in the rain under the lighted windows, and not even the thunder rumbling over the wooded foothills behind him sounded louder in his ears than the frantic drumming of his own heart, a disturbance caused less by awe than by joyful anticipation, and when he passed through the gate and sounded the bell he did so without a tremor of shyness.
The aged housekeeper looked at him the way most people looked at him, with that eye-squint of uncertainty he’d learned to counteract, as he did now, with a disarmingly boyish smile. He asked for Goring and when the housekeeper wanted to know his name he said merely that he was a friend of Penelope’s.
The woman looked at him oddly for a moment but then responded with a comprehending chirp of approval. “Friend of Penelope’s, are you? Oh, ha-ha, yes, I see. Well, come in, then, come in. I’ll see if he’s still up.”
He glanced behind him before following her inside and in a flash of silvery lightning noticed once more how totally isolated the house was.
She returned in a few moments and conducted him to a room at the head of the stairs, leaving him outside the open door.
With the greedy eyes of a traveler overjoyed to be home again, he tried to take in everything at once: the shelves of books, the huge mahogany desk, the marble fireplace, the picture of the young girl over the mantel, so that it was all a shimmery blur made worse by the tears filming his eyes, those dreamy slate-colored eyes that betrayed the presence of some wound or flaw or sorrow lurking just below the surface of his personality.